Monday, October 24, 2011

[ANNOUNCEMENT] O-Zone: A Journal of Object-Oriented Studies

by EILEEN JOY

I'm thrilled to announce the launch of a new open-access, online, and print-on-demand journal, to be published annually by punctum books: O-Zone: A Journal of Object-Oriented Studies. I'm especially excited that we've assembled an editorial team and board of advisory editors whose areas of expertise have such a broad and felicitously cross-disciplinary and cross-temporal reach, from political science to medieval studies to media studies to ecology to American literature to philosophy to sociology to religious studies to culture studies to critical animal studies to the fine arts and beyond. See below for our vision statement and the Call for Contributions for our first issue [you can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter].

. . . all these changes concern objects; at least, that’s what I’d like to be sure of.
—from the notebooks of Antoine Roquentin

O-Zone: A Journal of Object-Oriented Studies is a peer-reviewed,
open-access, and post-disciplinary journal devoted to object-oriented
studies, both situated within and traversing the humanities, sciences,
social sciences, and the arts. The journal aims to cultivate current
streams of thought already established within object-oriented studies,
while also providing space for new pathways along which disparate voices
and bodies of object-oriented knowledges might encounter, influence,
perturb, and motivate one another.

Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in ecology in the
humanities, sciences, and social sciences, with exciting new conceptual
innovations and critically reflective returns to the work of earlier
ecological studies. If ecological thought, in its most broad definition,
investigates the interrelations and interactions of entities with one
another, then the concept and domain of ecology can be expanded
significantly, referring not simply to the natural world apart from
social structures and configurations, but rather to relations between
entities of any kind, regardless of whether they are natural,
technological, social, or discursive. In short, culture and society are
no longer thought of as something distinct from nature, but as one
formation of nature among others. Increasingly, a sensibility has
emerged that views as impossible the treatment of society and nature as
distinct and separate domains, and instead sees the two as deeply
enmeshed with one another. Similarly, ecological and posthumanist
developments have increasingly come to intersect with one another,
jointly conceptualizing humans not as sovereign makers of all other
tools, beings and meanings, but as beings (or objects) among other
beings (and objects)—animate and inanimate, human and nonhuman—entwined
together in a variety of complex contingencies.

The inaugural issue of O-Zone seeks to expand current ecological dialogues and open new trajectories
for ecological engagement vis-à-vis the world of objects, or even
world(s)-as-object(s). Authors are invited to contribute short
meditations, of approximately 2,000 to 3,000 words, on any
object-oriented ecological turn or (re)turn percolating through their
current work. Authors might consider the following questions when
composing their contributions:

How do the post-correlationist, post-Kantian, realist, and
materialist turns transform our understanding of the systems,
operations, objects, and/or ontology of ecology?

What is an ecological politics, and what might certain
political considerations bring to object-oriented and new materialist
trends of ecological thinking? Conversely, how might an intensive focus
on the singularity and autonomy of objects revise our conceptions of
political domains?

Object-oriented theorists have proposed a number of new
critical modes to expand ecological inquiry, like dark and black
ecology. In what ways do these new approaches challenge the
traditionally “green” orientations of ecological investigation? Further,
what other new modes of ecological thought might we propose now, beyond
green?

Ecology has traditionally been defined as the study of systems
of inter-dependent relations, often with respect to natural
environments. How might certain strains of object-oriented thought that
take as a given the withdrawn nature and independent reality of objects
give rise to new ecological thinking? Further, what would it mean to
think the non- or para-“natural world” ecologically: such as new media,
machinic and other technologies, artificial life, bioinformatics,
cloning, and the like?

What is the relationship between posthumanism and ecology? Can
there be a post-ecology, and how might that relate to the “life” of
objects?

What would it mean to retrieve earlier ecological and
materialist voices, especially from feminist, gender, and queer studies,
and what might these voices contribute to object-oriented and new
materialist modes of thought?

These questions are only suggestions for possible meditations. Authors are also invited to develop their own topics.

For its inaugural issue, O-Zone: A Journal of Object-Oriented Studies
will also consider submissions on topics unrelated to ecology, but
still within the orbit of object-oriented studies. These contributions
might take the form of short essays, longer articles (of no more than
10,000 words), or digital media. In addition, we are accepting reviews
of recently published works on object-oriented and new materialism
subjects. Queries about the relevance of a given topic or potential
review are welcome.
Deadline for submissions is May 30, 2012. Please send all submissions and queries to editors@ozone-journal.com.

6 comments:

I seriously don't know how you can launch a journal named O-Zone and not have a single Romanian speaker on the advisory board... seriously, how many of those luminaries can even understand the lyrics to "Dragostea din tei"?